RYOBI Stud Finder

The RYOBI Stud Finder was my first project at TTI, and a very interesting one! About an hour into my first day on the job, I was assigned lead on this. That entailed being the central point of contact for all engineering, industrial design, graphics, safety, and quality. I worked hand in hand with my product manager to define the specs of this product based on previous and competitor models. We also worked very closely with our engineering/sourcing team out in Asia to optimize our design for the best possible performance, while keep costs as low as possible. Given that I’m under an NDA, and much of our development process contains sensitive information, I can’t disclose HOW we actually went about improving our stud finder, but I can say what we did.

Above is the previous stud finder, ESF5000. It was good, but people had some frustrations with it. Mainly, because of its' horizontal, two handed design, there were a lot of user error issues. The people spoke, and we listened. Along with listening to our customer's comments, we tested competitor models to understand what the user was going for. We compiled all of our notes on ergonomics, features, cost, and appearance, to then design our own stud finder. We conducted hand studies to understand how the user grips the stud finder, and designed ours to be as comfortable as possible, while fitting our visual brand language. 

The key features are:

Center Marking Notch - Allows the user to mark the center of a stud with a pencil. Many people prefer to use this over the center marking button, out of habit, and we wanted to accommodate that!

Center Marking Button - Allows the user to conveniently mark the center of a stud, with an on board button.\

Ergonomic Grip - We spent many days studying how people grip stud finders, and similar objects to dial the sizing in just right! 

Quick Start Instructions - Stud finders can be surprisingly difficult to figure out. Knowing that, we worked with our graphics and user experience team to create an easy to follow set of instructions right on the front of the device. Furthermore, I worked with the graphics team to get a QR code on the back that links to a how to video, which my product manager created with our marketing team!

Easy Open Battery Door - Battery doors that are hard to open can be frustrating. We kept that in mind, and design the spring force to be just enough to hold on the door, without making it too loose. 

One handed power button - Our previous version had two power buttons, which made operation a little confusing. So, we switched back to one, and made it as ergonomic as possible. This has made the device significantly easier to use! 

Wings to prevent wall contact - Stud finders work by sending out an electric field, and sensing the capacitance of the material. If your fingers touch the wall, it changes that capacitance value, and the stud finder will not give you an accurate reading. So, we put "wings" there to prevent fingers from touching the wall!

Overall, this was a really cool project to work on. Not to say I know everything, but I'd been designing for years at that point, so it was really cool to learn about all the other part of the process in bringing a product out to market!